A post here, a post there…3 more posts for good luck! Social media spending can quickly rack up when your business is gung-ho with its strategy and goes in all guns blazing when it comes to social marketing.
If there ain’t no strategy then it’s likely you won’t generate the fruits of your labour. And it’ll be difficult to work out what’s going right and what’s going wrong when everything’s so crazy and chaotic.
The truth is that when you don’t really get social media or what the freak is going on, you’ll probably end up overspending out of pure confusion. Or, you’ll spend more on things that you don’t need to and less on the really awesome stuff that’ll make a big difference to your business.
Throwing money at a problem can seem like the right thing to do, but it’ll come back to bite you on the ass if you’re not careful.
Our advice? Save some dollar, swot up on your socials and come try Lately.
One of the easiest ways to see an alarming amount of dollar signs at the end of every month is by spending too much on specialized agencies and outsourcing.
You might be outsourcing for content marketing, SEO, social media and other marketing elements, all at once. BUT, there will be lots of areas of cross-over and working with a team that can wear lots of different social marketing hats and do more than just one thing makes more business sense.
Duplicating resources is a common mistake too. If you’ve got members of your in-house team that have the skills to do something then don’t include it in the list of requirements and duties you give to an agency.
Likewise when it comes to deciding whether to make a new hire – if your software or agency can handle it, you can save money on recruiting a new team member.
Not to mention, that it take so much time to get on top and organize disconnected teams and software packages.Most businesses spend multiple hours a day trying to organize their work using multiple disconnected tools. That quickly adds up!
Social media should be taken seriously, like any other area of your business that has a budget. When it’s not really your deal, it can be easy to see it as a place kids go to post selfies or watch dog videos, but it’s your way to get in front of loads of new customers, from every demographic.
This means that you should set objectives and measure your campaign’s success based on pre-determined social marketing metrics. Otherwise, how will you know how you’re doing?! It could be as simple as increasing sales, down to something much more specific and granular. Being able to assess how you’re getting on means you can make tweaks and improve results.
Research, make plans and communicate what you’re looking for, so your whole team is on board and on track. Noone can read your mind (hopefully!) so give everyone a heads up.
Wasting time and money is surprisingly simple when you base your social strategy on pure luck.
Inexperienced social marketers can be forgiven for thinking that the amount of ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ a business has is the holy grail of social success. More Facebook likes means more profit, right?! A platform like Facebook doesn’t work like this anyway and their algorithm will stop users being bombarded with low-quality content.
Doggedly trying to increase ‘brand awareness’ to as many people as possible means that you might be spending way too much money on trying to reach a massive audience.
There are loads more significant ways to gage success and traction across platforms and Analytics & Reporting can help simplify and highlight your key KPIs.
And there’s great value in being big to a small group of people. By this, we mean creating lots of relevant content for a smaller, targeted but more engaged group of users. You can’t be everything to everyone, so using research, data from your campaigns and audience feedback, you can cater your social marketing in a smarter way.
Here’s where Lately comes in. Hi, nice to meet ya!
Our fast, easy and effective social media management dashboard lets you do everything, in real-time, all in one place. And the awesome thing is that management tools can reduce operational costs by too! So, the chances that you’re over-investing in social media are much, much slimmer.
You can plan, organize and manage campaigns, autogenerate and publish dozens of social posts at once and use super smart analytics tools to make better decisions.
All for a slice of what you’d shell out on agencies and outsourcing shenanigans.
Social media marketing doesn’t need to be daunting or scary when it’s not your thing – Lately gives you the core marketing tools to take the load of your shoulders and save time, money and sweat.
